search the site

Holly: Cleaning a Car Seat

Ugh, I was so frustrated the other day when Brett managed to spill almost an entire cup of milk in the car seat! I actually need to take some responsibility for this because I am suspicious that I didn’t close the lid completely…

We arrived home and I informed my husband that we would need to take the car seat out and apart so that I could wash it. This made him just as happy as it made me. We spent close to 20 minutes working on disassembling the darn thing! And, I will add, that we WERE using the instructions that came along with the seat. I know that the Britax is one of the safest car seats out there and this explains a bit why. It is put together so tightly and so well that it is SO difficult to get apart. I actually read on one website/blog that they suggest just spot-washing by hand where it needs to be cleaned. This really wasn’t an option for us.

So, 20 minutes later we had the seat taken apart (into literally 5 pieces) and had thrown the cover into the washing machine. Now, the directions say to hand wash but that really isn’t in my vocabulary, though I did select the ‘hand wash cycle’ on my machine. After it washed I hung it out to dry. It took almost a full day to dry.

When it was time to reassemble (this happened at the worst possible time- more on that in a future blog) my husband was alone with Brett. His frustration was palpable as I spoke to him over the phone and he was desperately trying to get the seat back together. As a note, the seat cover itself washed up nicely and went back on the seat just fine. It was putting all of the pieces back together that was tough. Plus, installing it into the car is never a cake walk.

So, a day and a half later we had the car seat fully assembled and reinstalled. Neither one of us look forward to having to clean this car seat again…

If anyone has any pointers on how we could have done this any easier I am all ears!

Oh, that is so hard. My daughter got sick in the car and we had to completely disassemble her Britax Boulevard. I didn’t stop to read the instructions, and I KNEW I should have taken pictures as I was doing it, but I just wanted to get it over with. The thing was, we had to take almost all of it apart because there was vomit in all the cracks and all over every strap.

I found your blog searching for help in getting it back together. I put most of it back together, but I’m left with one strap that has a loop on one end and the male end of a buckle on the other. Any ideas?